Techno-Optimist #10

Oxygen in the abyss, direct images of a Jupiter analog, CAR-T therapy gets an upgrade, fusion breaks a density barrier, AI powered robot dentists...and a lot more!

The Prologue and The Promise | Robert McCall

Welcome to the tenth edition of Techno-Optimist, where we explore stories from the frontiers of science, space, technology, and much more. To the 35 new readers who are excited about the future and tired of all the doomerism out there, welcome aboard.   

I can hardly believe we’ve reached the 10th edition already, and I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to each of you for making this possible. While I love writing this newsletter, it’s your readership that keeps it alive. Now that many of you have been with me for a few editions, I’d love to hear your thoughts—what resonates with you, what doesn’t? Is there anything you wish I’d cover more often? I’ve just launched a chat feature that all subscribers can participate in as well. These chats are designed for more in-depth discussions, so check it out and let me know your thoughts.

Some thoughts about todays quotes: This newsletter is deeply rooted in a pro-human philosophy, and a rejection of the antihuman rhetoric we see so much of these days. Writing often reflects the beliefs of its author, and this is no exception. My perspective has been shaped by Christian humanism, which I believe gives a stable footing for the view that humans are the most important part of the natural world and should have dominion of it. But however you come by it, I hope we can all agree (or that I can persuade you) that humanity’s existence is a good thing, that there should be more of us, and that we are not a blight or a virus needing to be controlled or eradicated.

Looking ahead, I hope to continue this journey for a long time, and that you all enjoy reading it as much as I do writing it. My hope is that Techno-Optimist inspires you to see the world as a place full of possibilities, and perhaps even motivates some of you to go out and build wonders.

Alright, let’s dive in.

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"A living man is worth more than a lifeless galaxy." –Olaf Stapledon (Star Maker)

‘Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.”’ —Genesis 1:28a

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Polymetallic nodules: cross section and hand for scale | Dann Blackwood (photo credit) via NOAA; The Metals Company

Oxygen in the abyss. Evidence of oxygen being produced in abyssal plains of our world’s oceans came as a surprise, given that there’s no plants so deep that not even a trace of sunlight leaks down through the miles of water. The source of this “dark oxygen” appears to be potato sized lumps of metal lying on the seafloor known as polymetallic nodules. These nodules form over millions of years when “when dissolved metals in seawater collect on fragments of shell – or other debris.” Acting as natural batteries, they generate enough electrical current to actually electrolyse seawater, splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen. At the moment these nodules are at the intersection of environmental and economic concerns: on one hand there are a number of companies aiming to mine them for their valuable minerals—which include iron, manganese, nickel, lithium, cobalt, titanium, and copper. On the other hand are interests that don’t want to see the ocean bottom damaged by sucking or scooping up the nodules; or that perhaps their oxygen production is important for the ecosystems there.

The most interesting aspect of this for me are the implications for life on exoplanets and under the surface of icy moons. Maybe this is a way of producing a fair amount of oxygen on any world with roughly similar composition to Earth that has an ocean. Amounts here are small enough though that you’d never oxygenate an atmosphere this way, but are enough perhaps for multicellular deep sea life requiring oxygen. More study should definitely be done on these nodules, but I like the possibilities it opens for exobiology. (BBC) (EOS) (Popular Mechanics) (The Metals Company: photo)

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Gas giant Epsilon Indi Ab (bright blob on left). Star in center with its light blocked by the coronagraph | NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, E. Matthews (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy)

Direct image of Jupiter analog in the Epsilon Indi system. Using the JWST, a team of astronomers has directly imaged Epsilon Indi Ab, the most Jupiter-like planet ever photographed. Just over 3x the mass of Jupiter, it orbits its star at a distance of 11.55 AU (or a little past the orbit of Saturn in our Solar System). The Epsilon Indi system is 12 light years away, and has at its center a K-type star cooler than our Sun, but 78.2% its mass. K-type stars are likely better candidates for life than the more common M-type (red dwarf) stars, having less active flares and a habitable zone far enough out so that planets aren’t tidally locked.

The location of this exoplanet around its star is important because it makes the system one of the best analogs to our own—with gas giants farther out, providing a shield to any life sustaining inner worlds against excessive bombardment from asteroids and comets. [Sidebar: many known Jupiter sized exoplanets are much closer in to their stars. These “hot Jupiter’s” are easier to find, but are unlike anything in our system]. Given this setup, there could easily be terrestrial worlds closer to the star, just like in our own Solar System.

Epsilon Indi has featured in science fiction from Star Trek to Halo, it’s pretty exciting that now we’re finally starting to get our first real look at it. What we need to do now is get some telescopes capable of detecting Earth sized worlds trained on this system asap! (@NASAWebb) (NASA)

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Far side of the Moon | NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Solving a Lunar mystery. China’s Chang’e 6 spacecraft returned samples from the Moon’s far side to Earth on June 25^th, and they could help solve the mystery of why the Moon’s far side looks so different from its near side. The side facing Earth is full of large dark features called “maria” (Latin for seas), caused by massive past eruptions of basaltic lava. The brighter areas are “older, heavily cratered and more reflective highlands that rise from the plains.” The far side has only small and scattered maria, and is almost entirely brighter highlands—leading to the question of why the two sides are so different. Beyond those visual differences, the far side has a much thicker crust, about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) more on average than the near side.

The most promising theory given to account for this has to do with the Moon’s formation, occurring in the aftermath of a collision between the proto-Earth and a Mars sized object called Theia. The surfaces of both Earth and the newly formed Moon would have originally been molten, and despite the Moon losing heat faster due to its smaller size, its near side (the Moon likely became tidally locked extremely quickly) would have been cooked by heat from the boiling rock of Earth, “while the far side would’ve cooled to frigid temperatures.” It is thought that this imbalance would have caused hot gaseous materials from the nearside to be swept to the far side, where they would cool and condense, gradually thickening the crust. If this is the case, it should be enriched with certain minerals like feldspar.

In fact, this is exactly what orbital surveys show, but more detailed evidence is needed. We have to look at the actual rocks, which is why far side material brought back by Chang’e 6 is so valuable. For the first time we might get some answers after a detailed analysis is done. (Scientific American)

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CAR-T therapy gets an upgrade. Here is some truly great news that could be a huge boost to CAR-T therapy, making it far more effective and less dangerous. The problem with existing CAR-T approaches is that the modified T-cells don’t often eliminate all the cancer—some cancerous cells usually manage to hide. While CAR-T cells “live to kill cancer cells. When they can’t find any more to kill, they act as if their job is done and go away.” Then any surviving cancer cells simply start multiplying again, and the disease returns.

The new approach creates something called a CAR-Enhancer (CAR-E), built by binding a weakened cytokine (a type of signaling molecule in the immune system) to the antigen the CAR-T cell is designed to target. Interacting with it causes the CAR-T cells stick around longer, until all the cancer is wiped out, and also “causes CAR-T cells to form a memory of the cancer cell, so they can spring back into action if the cancer returns.” In animals and experiments with human cancer cell lines, the CAR-E approach “succeeded in eliminating all tumor cells, clearing the way for clinical trials of this approach in human patients.” As an added bonus, the researchers found CAR-E was effective even when low numbers of CAR-T cells were used. If this translates to humans, it could reduce or eliminate the problem of cytokine release syndrome—essentially an overactive immune response—due to the large number of T-cells needed to tackle the cancer in existing CAR-T therapies.

I don’t think I’m overstating it to say that if this works in humans as advertised, it could effectively mean a cure for blood cancers. Let me say that again, this could mean not just a better treatment but an actual cure. Solid tumors are a lot more difficult for CAR-T therapy right now, but a lot of work is being done to improve their effectiveness there. My guess is that this development also helps with that. (Medical Xpress)

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A few AI updates for you: Claude (a competitor to ChatGPT) finally has an app for Android users after releasing in iOS app in May of this year. I’ve used both Claude and GPT now, and while people will have of course have preferences I’d say they’re roughly on par for now in terms of capabilities. OpenAI has definitely been making a lot of announcements lately, releasing their SearchGTP prototype which they hope will take a chunk of the internet search market away from Google. It’s not available to many users just yet, but I’m looking forward to trying it. Just being honest, Google kinda sucks lately, especially about anything even remotely political. Hopefully SearchGPT does better in that regard. They’re also rumored to be working on a far more powerful AI model, codenamed “Strawberry,” that could be released soon. Is it GPT-5? Something else? Elsewhere, Elon Musk’s team has started up a giant AI training facility called the Memphis Supercluster. Using 100,000 Nvidia chips, it’s the most powerful AI training cluster on the planet right now. The plan is to use it to train xAI’s Grok, and maybe also improve Tesla’s self driving car algorithm?

Meta also just released Llama 3.1, their most advanced LLM to date—apparently competitive with models like ChatGPT and Claude (I haven’t tried it yet).  The most important thing though may be that it’s open source. Unlike the now incorrectly named OpenAI (which uses a closed source model), Meta is committed to keeping their model open, which founder Mark Zuckerberg defended in a letter as being “Good for Developers…Good for Meta…[and] Good for the World.” He argues that “open models are both safer against unintentional harm, because they’ll have more eyes on them, and intentional harm, because China is probably stealing the closed model weights anyway.” Open models are also (I think) harder for governments to shut down or control, which in my opinion is always a good thing. xAI’s Grok is open sourced too just as an fyi. (Android Authority) (OpenAI) (Geeky Gadgets) (Teslarati) (Meta) (Not Boring)

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Space

Satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. The blue squares are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, red circles are other dwarf galaxies. | NAOJ/Tohoku University

• There’s so much we don't know even about our home galaxy, but thanks to the Subaru telescope in Hawaii we now know a little more than we did. Researchers using the telescope have found two new dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, dubbed Virgo III and Sextans II. Modeling suggests that given the distribution of known satellite galaxies, there may be close to 500 dwarf galaxies orbiting us—more than expected given current theories on dark matter. Enlisting a more powerful telescope with a wider field of view is the next step to resolve this mystery. (SciTechDaily)

Star map of the Perseid meteor shower | Sky&Telescope

• Don’t miss the Perseids next week! The Perseid meteor shower is predicted to peak the morning of August 12^th, with the best time to look being between midnight and dawn. Under ideal viewing conditions you should see at least one a minute, but possibly more. Check out this excellent visualization of the Earth going through the debris field of comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which causes the Perseids. (NASA) (American Meteor Society)

Lunar swirl Reiner Gamma | NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University

• Last time I talked about the discovery of a cave formed from old lava tubes on the Moon, and how it might be a great spot for a Lunar base. Now there’s a new suggestion that “mysterious, light-colored swirls on the Moon’s surface could be rocks magnetized by magma activity underground.” The current theory is that impacts could be responsible, maybe delivering iron-rich material causing the magnetic anomalies, but there’s not a good explanation for how impacts could things of those sizes and shapes. If it is indicative of old rivers of underground magma on the Moon, these could be great spots to search for lava tubes to host future Lunar bases and cities. (@coreyspowell) (The Source)

• Water has been found in hydrated minerals in samples of Lunar rock brought back by China’s Chang’e 5 back in 2020. This upends the previous thinking based on analysis of rocks from the Apollo missions that all Moon rocks are all bone dry. The possibility of being able to get water from sources other than permanently shadowed craters near the poles (where radar has found ice) could be important for future human activity on the Moon. (Live Science) (Nature Astronomy)

Animation of Rolls Royce micro-reactor | Rolls Royce

• British company Rolls Royce has received £4.8M ($6.1M) funding from the UK Space Agency to help “develop and demonstrate key technologies in our space nuclear micro-reactor.” Nuclear power for propulsion and general operations in space is important as we expand into the Solar System, particularly as solar power is not always available. First in space test flights of the Rolls Royce micro-reactor are expected by the end of the decade. I can’t resist, Rolls Royce just makes me want to say “Bond, James Bond,” and “Shaken, not stirred” in Sean Connery’s voice. (@RollsRoyce)

• Comet A117uUD (first spotted by astronomers this June) appears to be on a hyperbolic trajectory after a close encounter with Saturn back in 2022. This means it’s moving at speeds “that will allow it to exit the Solar System and enter interstellar space.” This is only the second comet from our own system that we’ve watched being yeeted out towards the stars—the first was in 1980—after a close encounter with one of our gas giants. Makes me wonder if this is how Oumuamua got its start in some other solar system? (IFL Science)

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AI, Energy, Engineering, & Physics

Torobo | Tokyo Robotics

• There’s a lot happening with humanoid robots these days, so much that I often have to pick and choose a few highlights to share, otherwise I’d talk about nothing else. Here’s a couple for today: first is Torobo from Tokyo Robotics that can accurately hammer a nail into a piece of wood. (video link). The second is the much anticipated Figure 02, a step along the path towards—as they say— “building the world’s first commercially viable autonomous humanoid robot.” (Interesting Engineering) (@Figure_robot)

• When it comes to magnetic confinement fusion, it’s all about making the confined plasma as hot as you can, for as long as you can, at as high a density as you can. Work at the University of Wisconsin has just given the density part of the equation a huge boost, smashing through a barrier called the Greenwald limit by a factor of 10, and keeping it that way in steady conditions during operation. Long story short, according to the researchers, “The maximum density appears to be set by hardware limitations rather than plasma instability.” Excellent news for fusion energy. (Science Alert)

• AI uses a lot of energy, so the pressure is on to find ways to make it more energy efficient, and therefore more economical to run. In service towards that goal, engineers in Minnesota have “demonstrated a state-of-the-art hardware device that could reduce energy consumption for artificial intelligent (AI) computing applications by a factor of at least 1,000.” The idea is for data to be processed within the AI’s memory array, without having to transfer it to the logic side of the machine. The new approach “where the data never leaves the memory” is called computational random-access memory, or CRAM. Another way to look at this is a way to expand AI by 1000x for the same amount of energy used. (@Dr_Singularity) (University of Minnesota)

AI powered robotic dentist preparing tooth for a crown | Perceptive

• An AI-powered robotic dentist has autonomously preformed an entire dental procedure of preparing a tooth to receive a dental crown, and the robot did it about eight times faster than a human dentist would—successfully I might add. This is great, so great…but I don’t want to do it just yet should I ever need a crown. It makes some part of me cringe just a little. Shows that even if you consciously choose to embrace technology, some things can still scare the heck out you. Can I blame it on scary dystopian movies? I feel like this sort of thing will be easier once we have true androids that look, talk, and act like humans. (New Atlas) (@Dr_Singularity)

• I don’t normally mention batteries for the simple reason that there’s always tons of news about them, but relatively little ever goes anywhere. However, this one looks to be different. Samsung has built an EV battery that can get you 600 miles (965 km) with just 9 minutes of charging—and it has a 20 year lifecycle. This isn’t just an idea in a lab either, it will be built in Samsung’s solid-state batty plant in the South Korean city of Suwon, with the entire plant making the solid-state batteries by 2027. (Interesting Engineering)

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Medicine

• Sometimes I don’t know whether to put something under medicine or AI/Engineering! This is definitely both: Kevin Piette, “paraplegic since an accident, made history today [July 23^rd] by carrying the Olympic flame with his exoskeleton!” Just to put this in perspective, this is the ‘worst’ these exoskeletons will ever be. They’ll only improve from here on out. (@Brink_Thinker)

• Weight loss drug liraglutide (similar to Ozempic) may help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease—reducing brain shrinkage by almost 50%. The study involved 200 patients, and reduced “cognitive decline by as much as 18% after one year of treatment.” It’s not a cure, but any progress against this devastating disease is welcome. On another note, is there anything this class of drugs (Ozempic and Co.) can’t do? In addition to slowing Alzheimer’s, they apparently improve heart and kidney health, and even fertility in women. Have we checked to see if they slow down aging? I bet they slow down aging. (Imperial) (@IterIntellectus)

• Speaking of fertility, a common drug called rapamycin—used to prevent transplanted organs from failing—might be able to extend a woman’s fertility by up to 5 years. More research is needed to replicate the small study, but this could be a gamechanger for a lot of couples. Especially as many in developed countries are having children later than previous generations. (Science Alert)

• Slowly, then all of a sudden. I feel like that’s a great way to describe the lifechanging and even world changing technology coming down the pike. Prospects have definitely improved over the decades for people with HIV, but the real goal is a cure. Completely effective prevention is almost as good though, with a twice annual injection of an antiviral drug called lenacapavir—used to treat HIV/AIDS—giving 100% prophylactic protection in a study involving 2,000 African women. When the study was presented, it was so well received the audience gave the researches a standing ovation. (Science) (@IterIntellectus)

• Natural Killer (NK) cells are part of our immune system and are being worked on from multiple angles to increase their cancer fighting ability. One rather interesting finding is that stimulating them with an electrical field increased their potency against glioblastoma—a common and aggressive form of brain cancer. It would be easy to administer too, all patients would need to do is wear a cap with electrodes in it. (Medical Xpress)

• Cancers are made up of abnormal cells that have “forgotten” their proper function in the body. For skin cancer, returning some of that original function looks to be a good way of preventing its spread. Using nanoparticles to deliver an amino acid necessary for melanin production, the researchers were able to reactivate the dormant metabolic pathway in the cancer cells, causing them to churn out melanin and run out of energy—making them less likely to spread. (The Scientist)

• A newly developed family of compound dubbed GmPcides (gram-positive-icide) has been found to wipe out gram positive bacteria in experiments. Specifically, this test was against Streptococcus pyogenes, a bacteria that caused half a million deaths each year, and is the culprit behind flesh-eating disease. Mice infected with S. pyogenes and treated with a GmPcide did far better than their untreated peers, significantly speeding up recovery. (Phys.org)

Man with ALS using BCI to control Apple Vision Pro | Synchron

• Neuralink isn’t the only one working on a BCI (brain-computer interfaces), with rival Synchron allowing a patient with ALS to control an Apple Vision Pro headset with his thoughts alone. It’s early days for BCI’s, but progress is happening rapidly—encouraging for anyone with serious physical limitations. (Interesting Engineering)

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Biotech & Agriculture

• Two different groups have discovered how to completely eliminate certain types of PFAS, or “forever chemicals.” PFAS are highly resistant to both water and heat, making them quite useful “for everything from non-stick cookware to firefighting foam and water-repellant clothing.” However, because they’re so tough they tend to be very difficult to break down, persisting in the environment—hence the term forever chemicals. On top of this, they’ve been found to help cause a number of health issues from diabetes and cancer, to fertility problems.

  The first group managed to design a light catalyzed chemical reaction that broke down the PFAS overnight at near room temperatures, even recovering some for reuse. The second team found a species of bacteria that seem to enjoy munching on the fluorine-carbon bonds characteristic of many PFAS, opening the door to use at wastewater treatment facilities (the bacteria were actually found in wastewater). Technological problem, technological—including biotech—solution. (New Atlas) (Science Daily)

• Farmers have been blamed for glyphosate (a herbicide) in European rivers. Turns out, the real culprit is detergent additives that get converted to glyphosate in the chemical rich sludge of sewage treatment plants. Scientists decided to look for another cause after extensive regulation of glyphosate use by farmers failed to make a difference to levels in waterways. Looks like there’s an easy fix though, just switch the detergent commonly used in Europe—North America uses a different variety, and doesn’t have this problem. For those of you who were wondering, I take a rather dim view of the ability of governments to make good decisions. This is yet another example of their not only failing to fix a technological problem, but actively making it worse by hurting farmer’s ability to use necessary herbicide for their crops. (Phys.org)

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Weird & Wonderful

• I didn’t know this, and apparently neither did anyone else until just now, but crows can count out loud just like human toddlers. Previous studies had established “that crows understood the concept of counting and had very good vocal control,” so it made sense to see if they could actually count out loud. Even stranger, analysis of some old videos shows that “at least three chimpanzees had learned to speak human words, suggesting that the animals are capable of learning this ability given the right circumstances.” Reminiscent of Planet of the Apes? Or maybe we should take a page from the Uplift Saga by David Brin, where humans “uplift” several of the most intelligent animals to sentience—including chimpanzees, though not crows. (Popular Mechanics) (Phys.org)

• Analysis of 4-billion-year-old zircon crystals from Australia suggests that fresh water and solid land both existed when the crystals formed. This is right in the middle of the Late Heavy Bombardment, a time when Earth was regularly whacked by large asteroids. It was thought to be a time when crust would have had difficultly forming, and the planet’s surface consisted largely of magma oceans. Essentially, this means that Earth may have been habitable by at least 4 billion years ago, which is right around the time you see the earliest (still contested) possible traces of life. (EOS) (@coreyspowell)

Lunar repository | DALL-E

• A lunar biorepository has been proposed by scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. The concept is similar to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault located on an Arctic Norwegian island, but would contain preserved animal skin samples from the world’s endangered species. The idea is that if we fail to save these species now, it’s a good idea to have a backup that we could one day use to “de-extinct” them. Personally, I think it’s a great idea. Plus, it gives us another project to do in space, and I’m always in favor of that. (Space.com) (@MarioNawfal)

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Photos & Videos

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“Legolith” | ESA, LEGO

LEGO and the European Space Agency have teamed up to make LEGO “legolith” bricks out of meteorite dust and some simulated lunar regolith. The idea is to “test how material on the surface of the Moon…could be used as a future building material.” (Physics World) (@vincent1701)

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Chandra telescope 25th anniversary photo collection | Chandra X-Ray Observatory

To celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the Chandra X-ray observatory (space telescope), 25 new images ranging from our own Solar System to nearly the edge of the known universe have been released. You can see the individual images and descriptions here. Seriously, go poke around if you have time, they’re pretty spectacular. (Chandra X-Ray Observatory)

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Storms and star trails | Andrew McCarthy

Have a look at this beautiful timelapse composition of a thunderstorm and star trails. It’s quite something. The author, Andrew McCarthy, has a lot of stunning photos on his X account, go check it out! (@AJamesMcCarthy)

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Recommendations & Reviews

Human progress | Roots of Progress Institute

Today I’m recommending you check out The Techno-Humanist Manifesto by Jason Crawford, who writes Roots of Progress. The book lays out a new philosophy of progress, and takes “the view that science, technology, and industry are good—not in themselves, but because they ultimately promote human well-being and flourishing.” A position with which I fully agree. The Techno-Humanist Manifesto is being released one chapter per week, you can read it free here on the Roots of Progress website. Or check it out on Jason’s blog here.

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That’s it for now, but Techno-Optimist will be back in your inbox on August 24^th. Thank you all for reading — and until next time, keep your eyes on the horizon.

     -Owen